Ethan Hein’s perspective on electronic music in music education

This week for technology in music education, we were joined by Ethan Hein for one of his several lectures for music education here at the con. The focus of this lecture was electronic music and it’s place in music education, with a discussion of how this music can be brought into the classroom successfully. While this topic has naturally been a part of several lectures in this course, having Ethan Hein’s perspective on electronic music and it’s place in music education was especially thought provoking.

Ethan walked us through several of his preferred effects and methods of music making with Ableton live, a program that we have been exposed to in this course a few times already. Many of the methods involved the manipulation of existing music, which falls in line with Ethan’s interest in the contentious issues that surround rap and hip hop music. For example, using the vocoder to manipulate live recorded human vocal performances was an interesting way to bring a new modern energy to live vocals. Further examples that were interesting included manipulating live recorded drum performances using simple cut and paste functions, and ableton effects such as beat repeat, as well as slicing the audio and assigning the samples to a midi controller in order to have control over creating a sampled drumbeat. Ethan also discussed the history of technology behind tempo and pitch manipulation, as in the past it was impossible to change tempo without affecting pitch and vice versa. These techniques are some of many examples of methods to engage students in the modern music classroom in a way that is relevant to the popular musical landscape of today.

It is important to consider how best to bring electronic music such as this into the music classroom. Ethan Hein has also given us lectures in the past few days about how to approach rap music in the classroom, considering it’s specific values on individuality and race. Personally, using electronic music education through the use of programs such as ableton or even ipad/phone/computer/online apps to create electronic/sampled sounds for students is a great place to start. A video created by Eric Jao (DJ Enferno – not inferno) states his tips for using music production and electronic music in the classroom. He opens with a great analogy, which is that pre made sound loops are like big building blocks and are easy for students to work with, rather than smaller lego bricks requiring planning and detail (which can be compared to writing music note by note with an instrument). The pre made audio loops in a program like garage band or sound trap are a great starting point for bringing electronic music into the classroom. Jao also states the importance of giving students parameters to work within, while still allowing them the freedom to be creative. His example in this case is to tell students to choose one drum loop, one bass loop and one melodic loop so that students are not losing track of creating a piece of music with clarity.

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Mitchell